Thomas McMahon of BloggerDesign has posted his first thoughts on the new Official Plugin Directory and he is not impressed.
When I first read last week that WordPress had launched an official plugins directory I was excited. There are lots of good plugins out there that are not in any sort of searchable database other than a search engine. However, the WordPress plugin directory isn’t living up to my excitations yet.
I’ve got the plugin uploaded and ready to go, I think. But I have no idea what to do next or how to get it into the WordPress official directory. The whole ordeal isn’t user friendly and I can see how quickly it’d deter plugin authors from uploading their plugins. That is unless I’m the only one who doesn’t get the whole SVN thing.
I think the official WordPress plugin directory is a great idea, but I think it’s confusing and annoying to get a plugin listed. I’d recommend wp-plugins.net for a large database of WordPress plugins that is extremely easy to get included in.
I haven’t tried adding a plugin to the directory yet, but so far the user side experience is not too bad. I agree with Thomas about the limited number of plugins currently listed, but I hope time will rectify that. I have said a billion times that I always thought that WordPress should have its own Plugin and Theme directories.